MAKING
LABOR PART OF THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CULTURE
By David Bacon
CFT Perspectives, 2/08

The
Dolores Huerta Labor Institute is not your average labor studies program.
In fact, many of the common elements of community college programs –
stewards’ and leadership training, costing a union contract or how
to run meetings – are not part of its curriculum. In part, this
is the case because some campuses in the huge Los Angeles Community College
system, like LA Trade Tech, already offer them. But the Dolores Huerta
Labor Institute has a different vision.

“We
want to let the people of LA know what it means to be a working person,”
says John Delloro, institute director. “Corporations have gained
so much power in our world, and we need our students to take a look at
that.” That’s an ambitious goal for a system with 130,000
students. A year after its inauguration, the institute has made important
progress towards it.

A
team of supporters, including the Los Angeles Community College Faculty
Guild, AFT Local 1521, the Los Angeles County Labor Federation, the UCLA
Labor Center and the labor studies program at Trade Tech cooperated in
finding the necessary support. With a matching grant agreement from the
community college board, they raised pledges of $200,000 per year for
three years.

After
the kickoff in March of last year, Delloro became DHLI’s first director.
The organizing group wanted someone with both academic and labor credentials.
Delloro started with the huge culinary union in Las Vegas, then became
a regional manager for the California State Employees (SEIU Local 1000),
and finally worked at staff director for SEIU Local 399 on the union’s
campaigns to organize workers at the Tenet and Catholic Healthcare West
hospital chains. Delloro also had a degree in Asian American studies,
and taught labor history at Trade Tech through the years he worked on
union staff. “I never let go of the classroom,” he says.

Delloro’s
strategy has been to integrate labor or working-class themes into the
curriculum across many disciplines, and all nine campuses. In their first
outreach efforts, the institute reached 1278 students and 53 faculty in
a seven-week period. Delloro met one-on-one with faculty on all nine campuses,
and identified 52 instructors interested in bringing labor studies into
their classes.

It
was not easy. “There’s not a lot of knowledge out there about
labor studies,” he explains. “Some people thought I was a
propaganda arm for unions, and questioned whether we’d take a rigorous
approach to their disciplines. I tried to explain that we wanted to look
at the conditions and history of working people through the perspective
of all the subjects taught in community college.”

In
English 101 students in one class were asked to write about working people.
In history they were urged to consider the moments when labor played in
role in social and political events. “Having a labor perspective
in courses is actually part of academic freedom,” Delloro says.

It
is also a practical way of reaching community college students, he believes,
many of who work, and who are only on campus for limited periods of time.
“We’re trying to recreate a culture on campus, and make it
relevant to the workplace,” he says.

The
nascent program also decided to concentrate on making resources available
to participating faculty, and 36 instructors came together to make a plan
a series of speakers on campuses. They invited people like Karen Brodkin,
author of Making Democracy Matter, who spoke about her study of the labor
movement. Patrick Finn from the State University of New York talked about
the way the educational system produces social inequality.

In
addition to recognized academics, the speaker series featured workers
who described conditions in the health care industry, or their organizing
efforts at Los Angeles International Airport, LAX. A timely (and heated)
healthcare panel including representatives of the California Nurses Association
and the Service Employees discussed the governor’s health care reform
proposal with a representative of the governor’s office. Dolores
Huerta, founder of the United Farm Workers, for whom the institute was
named, gave a speech, and the Multi-ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing
Network (MIWON) and other organizers of the big immigrant rights marches
came as well.

Another
important resource for faculty has been the Southern California Library,
a repository for materials documenting the social and political movements
of the L.A. area. The library agreed to make primary research materials
about Los Angeles labor history available for use in the classroom.

Two
labor sociologists, Mike Davis and Nelson Lichtenstein, proposed bringing
a group of labor scholars together for a retreat to discuss ways of strengthening
the institute’s program. In October 80 scholars and community college
faculty gathers in the larges such meeting in Los Angeles history. Delloro
used small breakout sessions, mixing the disciplines of participants,
to discuss ideas for labor-themed curricula. Unions gave presentations
about cutting-edge organizing efforts. “We want to connect the classes
to what’s happening in the outside world,” Delloro emphasizes.
“We want students to see real campaigns and movements.”

Over
the year, the DHLI staff grew to include Kennedy Lee, who left a high-paying
job as a lawyer to do work she considered politically and socially important.
Another part time staff member was hired to raise more funds from unions.

With
more resources, this year the institute hopes to expand what it can offer
faculty. Delloro spent several weeks combing through reams of materials
to assemble a primer on teaching labor studies. It has been distilled
into a manual that will be divided into sections. One, on economics for
working people, will include one-page sheets with diagrams showing how
the Los Angeles economy is structured, comparing U.S. living standards
with other countries and productivity with wages, dramatizing the pay
of corporate executives, and describing the distribution of union members
in the county.

Another
section will deal with unions themselves. Short pieces will give accurate
definitions, describe different models of representation, show how unions
are structured, and discuss the development of community-based workers’
centers like those for Los Angeles’ day laborers, domestic employees,
and garment workers. Materials to aid faculty, with suggestions about
how to teach labor-themed material in the classroom, reading and film
lists, and web links will also be included.

The
manual will be posted online at the end of February. Initially it will
be available to faculty who have made a commitment to using it, but eventually
it will be accessible to anyone. “The whole purpose of this is to
encourage faculty to integrate labor studies into their classes,”
Delloro says.

Soon,
however, the Institute plans to begin offering classes on its own. This
has required negotiating a complex and time-consuming process to gain
accreditation for them, but they hope to start this coming fall, first
at East L.A. Community College. Courses in planning, which will satisfy
the social studies requirement, include:

*
Labor History I, from the colonial period to reconstruction;

*
Labor History II, from reconstruction to the present;

*
Sociology of Labor, looking at class issues through social theory;

*
California Literature and Labor, using labor-themed literary texts;

*
Labor Studies 4, an introductory survey of labor studies; and

*
World History of Working People.

At
Harbor College, labor themes were integrated last year into two special
tracks of the Program for Accelerated College Education. PACE offers a
special program to people who work during the day, with evening classes
at the workplace and special events on weekends. Students can complete
their general requirements in two and a half years. One PACE program took
place at the union hall of Local 63 of the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union, and the other at Kaiser Hospital in Harbor City. Students
took a tour of the harbor guided by the Harry Bridges Institute, examining
how globalization impacts the Los Angeles economy. Another tour focused
on the labor history of the city.

The
Dolores Huerta Labor Institute also set up a special internship program
under the umbrella of Union Summer for community college students. Ninety-three
students applied for five positions. Those selected were paid about $300/week
for the whole summer, and worked with two SEIU locals, 721 (a public workers
union) and United Healthcare Workers West. They participated in organizing
drives, even staying overnight in hotels, giving them a chance to see
the work of union organizers at close quarters.

The
institute has a MySpace page with contact information, YouTube clips,
and lots of comments and announcements from students and supporters: click
here

Disclosure: the author was one of the speakers in the Harbor College program,
presenting text and photographs about the links between globalization
and U.S. immigration policy.